# 12 Peter Hogan: "A shitstain on the underpants of Cambodia since he arrived." Hogan's eloquent description of the man whose life he was determined to destroy

Dear Peter

Before I move on to your co-conspirators in the plot to bring down Fletcher I have more questions for you in relation to statements you have made on the Khmer440 website.

How many of the accusations you level at David Fletcher are true (based on facts, evidence) and how many are the product of your fertile imagination, Peter? This is what I am seeking to find out with these questions. The reason for my asking you all these questions will become apparent in due course. You will, of course, refuse to answer any of them. I will leave it to others to decide what your silence signifies.

You might like to think of my questions as being of the kind that might be asked in a proper court of law if it should happen that you are sued by David Fletcher for defamation when he is released from jail.

On Friday Sept 11^th, 2009, at 8:47 pm you posted the following in response to an article published by what you refer to as “the most widely circulated newspaper in Spain”:

“a Briton who is being investigated by agents from (APLE). His organization is dedicated to distribute food, in the main landfill of the Cambodian capital, a mountain of garbage which employs hundreds of families without resources, and many families, and many children. Several of the contributors to this British sounded the alarm on his anomalous behavior with the smaller ones. The investigation showed that this man had been living for several months with a girl of 17 who claimed to be his partner. But as in many cases the girl refused to testify against him and there is no evidence beyond photographs that he is especially affectionate with children.”

You preface your post with a question: “I wonder who they could be talking about” but just who is being referred to is clear given the context and the fact that the thread is entitled “Dump Charity Briton Under Investigation for Pedophilia”

QUESTION: Did you at the time and do you now have any evidence that ‘this man’ (Fletcher) had been “living for several months with a girl of 17 who claimed to be his partner.”?

QUESTION: Do you have any evidence that ‘the girl’ refused to testify against Fletcher?

QUESTION: How is it that you were privy to the details of whatever ‘investigation’ was taking place?

QUESTION: Did you initiate this investigation?

QUESTION: If you had some legitimate reason to be kept informed about the details of the investigation by APLE, did you have permission from APLE to be publishing details of the investigation online? Did it occur to you that publishing such details might compromise whatever investigation was taking place?

(As it happens, your eagerness to rush into print with what you knew to be taking place behind the scenes did alert David Fletcher to the fact that he was ‘under investigation’. In the event that David Fletcher was in fact guilty of some crime against children your announcement.

Kit Hargreaves, whilst at times a voice of reason and common sense in his Khmer440 posts, makes an interesting observation about the role that the site plays in the lives of readers. The following comments by Kit, posted on 3^rd July 2009, were inspired by complaints about ‘deleted posts’ on 3^rd July.

NOTE: I should add here that when I was a Khmer440 subscriber my posts were regularly deleted – especially those having to do with Scott Neeson. I was eventually banned entirely and, in October 2014, am still banned despite Khymer440 having a new owner. The new owner, who remains anonymous, insists that the rumour going around that he is Scott Neeson, is not true.)

“There is no "phantom deleter", it was probably KiR (Peter Hogan) and if not, it was GM doing what he thought KiR would want.

It doesn't matter. You see, for all your whinging and moaning, I know as well as you do that you'll keep reading the site regardless of who deletes what. It's one of the great things about khmer440, everyone reads it, even if it's only so that they can complain how crap it is. Take Koastal for instance; he's been wronged so many times by the board it's not even funny, yet every time someone suspends his account and edits his posts he patiently skypes me to ask to be allowed back for more.

If you don't like it, you can stop reading anytime you want. The thing is, you don't want to stop, you simply love it too much.”

What Khmer440 followers want is to be entertained. The want drama. And, as the proprietors of tabloid newspapers discovered long ago, there is nothing like a juicy scandal to titillate readers and keep them coming back for more. Facts, truth and evidence are of little or no interest. Why let such details get in the way of a good story? And if the story being told destroys someone’s life, so be it. As with gladiators of old, there are plenty of readers who get a vicarious thrill out of seeing blood spilled – whether the victim is innocent or guilty.

I am not sure who GM is but I suspect that it is ‘gavinmac’, one of Khmer440’s ‘moderators’.  (Given how immoderate he and others monitoring Khmer440 have been, the word ‘moderator’ can only be used in an ironic sense!)

“Graham Adler, alias ‘LaudJohn’ is one of many on Khmer440 who use spurious logic to convince themselves, along with others, of Fletcher’s guilt. This, from Graham on 3^rd July 2009

The tourist police have a file an inch thick on DF, but they're as weak as camel piss. The fact of the matter re DF's bullshit challenge to confront him at his bar is a nonsense. It's typical of the arrogance of the man. You just don't get it! It won't be a court of law. There's just no point. If he's proved guilty of either accusation, and there's irrefutable evidence, what's he gonna do? give himself up to the police for a mandatory sentence? HE KNOWS he's guilty.”

How Graham Adler knows that David Fletcher knows that he is guilty is anyone’s guess, unless, of course, Graham Adler is blessed with psychic powers!

Adler has nothing to go on other than the rumoured existence of “a file an inch thick” being held by the ‘tourist police’. For reasons that no-one has explained or bothered to look into, this ‘file’ was never produced in evidence at Fletcher’s trial. Perhaps the file is not quite an inch thick? Perhaps there is nothing in it that was deemed worth mentioning in court? Perhaps there is no file!? It doesn’t matter to you, Peter, does it? The story you wish to tell is much more persuasive, much more sensational, if there is an inch thick file that the Cambodian police refuse to act on.

The fact that this “inch thick file” has never seen the light of day speaks for itself of just how a rumour, started on a site like Khmer440 by yourself, Peter Hogan, along with your co-conspirators, can be passed along like a Chinese whisper until it acquires the status of fact. This fact can then be embellished upon and later accepted unquestioningly by hack journalists like Andrew Drummond who fly in for 72 hours to do a sensational expose for a British tabloid. And then Drummond’s Chinese whispers are embellished upon further by journalists like Richard Shears who do not even bother to fly into Cambodia for 72 hours to make even a cursory investigation into the facts. Once these Chinese whispers have been handed by one journalistic hack to another, they acquire the status of fact. And once the ‘facts’ have been established, no journalist, no human rights group feels the need to establish whether or not any of these facts are correct. An extraordinary state of affairs.

In your eagerness, Peter, to rush into print with what you knew to be taking place behind the scenes, you alerted David Fletcher to the fact that he was ‘under investigation’. In the event that David Fletcher was in fact guilty of some crime against children your announcement of the investigation gave him ample opportunity to (a) cover his tracks and (b) to take extreme care in future to do nothing that would attract the attention of APLE or any of the other investigators who took an interest in the allegations made by yourself.)

It is (b) that is of particular interest here given the role that APLE played in the apprehension and conviction David Fletcher – all the while knowing court documents revealed that the ‘victim’, Yang Dany, was still a virgin AFTER she had allegedly been raped by Fletcher. APLE was prepared to proceed with the prosecution of Fletcher and be pleased with the outcome despite the fact that Yang Dany’s hymen was intact; despite the fact that Fletcher was not legally represented in the secret trial held whilst he was in Thailand; despite knowing how many breaches of the Cambodian Code of Criminal Procedure were occurring in the process.

New developments relating to Mr Fletcher’s 27^th Oct hearing necessitate that we leave you,  Peter Hogan for the time being, to ponder these many questions. There will, of course, be no answers from you. In the pursuit of whatever pleasure it gives you to engage in the blood sport of defamation, you have no interest at all in facts, evidence or the truth.

NEXT: A letter to Thierry Darnaudet – the man behind APLE. My 16^th Oct letter to Ana G. Pinheiro, Legal Coordinator APLE (Action Pour Les Enfants) is to be found at:

http://cambodia440.blogspot.com/2014/10/8-what-role-did-aple-play-in-having.html